Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Entries by emptywheel
When All EOs Are Pixie Dust, It Means Dick Can Declassify Anything He Wants
/in CIA Leak Case, Unitary Executive/by emptywheelThe discovery that Bush can turn his own Executive Orders into Pixie Dust provides an explanation for one of the lingering mysteries of the Plame outing: the EO governing declassification authority doesn’t explicitly give the Vice President the authority to declassify information that he has not, himself, classified. But because the President always intended the Vice President to be treated as the President is in that Executive Order, it means Cheney has that authority contrary to the plan text meaning of the EO.
Bam!!! CIA Scores Direct Hit on the Unitary Executive!
/in Intelligence/by emptywheelAt least that’s what I take from this quote:
In the e-mail version of the Politico Playbook this morning, Mike Allen quotes “a senior administration official” lamenting that “they should have burned the NIE and kept the tapes.” The official was referring to the administration’s debacles with the intelligence community since the new NIE on Iran was released and the CIA revealed that it had destroyed videotaped interrogations.
All Your Data Belong to George
/in Unitary Executive/by emptywheelGuess what? ODNI has told Congress it doesn’t want minimization procedures to be codified in statute because it would make it too hard to change those procedures. That, plus a continued emphasis on Executive Orders that George Bush can turn into pixie dust, suggests they really don’t want to be held responsible for protecting US persons’ privacy when conducting wiretaps.
We’re Not Getting the FISA Opinions … Which Leaves Just the Lawsuits
/in Unitary Executive/by emptywheelJudge Bates, the same judge who rejected the Wilsons lawsuit against Dick and Libby and Karl and Dick, basically issued the same opinion he did in the Wilsons’ suit: It’s a great idea, but, no, not going to let it happen. All the more reason to figure against immunity for the telecoms.
Bush Turned His EO on Classified Information into Pixie Dust, Too
/in Unitary Executive/by emptywheelSheldon Whitehouse revealed that Bush has turned his Executive Order governing surveillance of Americans overseas into Pixie Dust. But that’s not the only EO Bush has done that with; he also turned his EO governing the treatment of classified information into Pixie Dust. In fact, he didn’t bother to tell the guy whose job it is to enforce that EO that it was Pixie Dust until four years after the fact!